#3:It can take up to 80 years to make up for the impacts of demolishing an existing building and constructing a new one, even if the resulting building is extremely energy efficient. Conversely, though the existing building stock makes the most significant negative impact on the climate, it provides us with the greatest opportunity to reduce the impact of the built environment. LEED O+M certification provides third party verification that a project achieved a specific level of performance that will serve to greatly reduce the project’s impact on the environment.
With an approach focused on both performance oriented sustainable strategies and outcomes, LEED O+M supports high performing buildings by increasing operational and resource efficiencies and influencing human behaviors through the development and implementation of policies.
The positive effects of a LEED O+M certified building extend to the community itself by being engaged in policies and practices that incorporate environmental, economic, social, transportation, and healthy living considerations.
LEED O+M can be applied to both whole buildings and interior spaces in a number of sectors from offices and retail to manufacturing, warehouses and distribution centers, hospitality, healthcare, and universities.
Taipei 101 is a fantastic example of LEED O+M. It was certified LEED O+M Platinum using version 2009 in 2011, recertified Platinum in 2016 using LEED v4 and recertified Platinum again in 2021 using LEED v4.1. Although it is an incredibly unique and iconic building with 101 floors and over 2 million square feet of space, it is a perfect example of how building owners use LEED O+M to demonstrate leadership and maintain and verify their long-term commitment to sustainability.
#4:LEED helps building owners and managers solve building problems, improve building performance, and maintain and improve performance over time. LEED reduces cost streams associated with building operations, reduces environmental impacts, creates healthier and more productive employee workspaces and provides public recognition for leadership in sustainability.
Benefits include:
Demonstrate actual green building performance
Communicate achievement of corporate social responsibility goals
Employee productivity gains, retention increase and recruitment enhancements
Increased occupancy, rental rates and property value
Lower operating expenses, which equals higher asset value
Indoor air quality improvement
Reduced natural resource use
Enhanced energy efficiency
Positive social impacts
Meet government mandates and high level of commitment to environmental standards
Market differentiation and Brand recognition
Tenant and community educational programs
Remain competitive in market
Meet occupant sustainability requirements
Reduced tenant turnover
Waste source reduction
Improved water efficiency
#5:LEED helps building owners and managers solve building problems, improve building performance, and maintain and improve performance over time. LEED reduces cost streams associated with building operations, reduces environmental impacts, creates healthier and more productive employee workspaces and provides public recognition for leadership in sustainability.
Benefits include:
Demonstrate actual green building performance
Communicate achievement of corporate social responsibility goals
Employee productivity gains, retention increase and recruitment enhancements
Increased occupancy, rental rates and property value
Lower operating expenses, which equals higher asset value
Indoor air quality improvement
Reduced natural resource use
Enhanced energy efficiency
Positive social impacts
Meet government mandates and high level of commitment to environmental standards
Market differentiation and Brand recognition
Tenant and community educational programs
Remain competitive in market
Meet occupant sustainability requirements
Reduced tenant turnover
Waste source reduction
Improved water efficiency
#6:LEED recertification is an important step in protecting a building asset, helping owners maintain and improve a building, while keeping the sustainability investment in place. Using on-going performance data to protect your asset, LEED recertification helps ensure that the building is operating exactly the way you intended from the day you first earned LEED certification and verifies that LEED projects continue to maintain high levels of sustainability performance long after they are constructed and occupied.
#7:Decisions made around indoor air quality, thermal and visual comfort and occupants’ satisfaction can have a significant impact on occupant health. Green buildings with good indoor environmental quality protect the health and comfort of building occupants. High-quality indoor environments also enhance productivity, decrease absenteeism, improve the building’s value, and reduce liability for building designers and owners.
LEED O+M policies, strategies and tracking mechanisms support existing health needs and also identify potential risks to occupant health. LEED encourages project teams to develop policies and programs based on proven methods that prioritize the health and comfort of the building occupants and to measure performance with well-established indicators.
For many tech and professional services firms, sustainability is tied less to investors and marketing and more toward employee recruitment and retention. Many organizations base their entire real estate strategy on attracting and retaining talent by creating a place where people want to come to work. Studies have shown that the millennial generation seeks corporate social responsibility from employers in a way that exceeds prior generations. LEED O+M can be a significant part of delivering a healthy and appealing workplace.
#8:Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) represents an entity’s behavior on environmental issues, its engagement with society, and the strength of its governance. The outcome of a prioritized ESG strategy is to benchmark and report on quantitative and qualitative data related to non-traditional topics that supplement financial disclosures to provide company investors and other stakeholders a more complex and comprehensive view of the performance of the company.
There is an evolutionary change in asset level assessment and reporting that is shifting the nature of ESG reporting for assets. Transparency is essential for stakeholders to gain insight into the nature of their investments so they can connect values and business strategies. Sustainability reporting and green building certifications have become more than just a relevant aspect of decision making as they are now material concerns to investors, shareholders, and company owners.
ESG strategies encompass cross-disciplinary initiatives including greenhouse-gas emissions reduction, green building certifications, procurement, waste management, energy and water conservation, stakeholder engagement, risk assessments, human rights, resilience, health and safety, and transparency.
For real estate investors and investment managers, sustainability is a requirement to secure funding for investments. Similarly, Fortune 500 organizations and large multi-national companies that own or occupy real estate around the world aggressively seek to ensure quality and consistency through sustainability and specifically green building certifications such as LEED O+M that are highly regarded various sustainability reporting schemes.
#9:By measuring energy, water, waste, transportation and human experience data through Arc, buildings can achieve certification and recertification and quantify their investments relative to climate change mitigation.
More than 21,000 projects in 135 countries are using Arc to track their data, covering 5.54 billion square feet of space, and impacting 10.4 million occupants.
Arc enables owners to protect their sustainability investments over time by ensuring that their initial certification is just the starting point for ongoing environmental mitigation. With ever-increasing organizational commitments to ESG and sustainability goals, improving building performance is one of the most powerful ways companies can demonstrate their commitment.
#10:Existing buildings are responsible for 40 percent of energy-related greenhouse gases, and the sector is not yet reversing its contribution in a meaningful way or nearly fast enough; as population grows, and building space per capita increases, the relative significance of buildings to climate is increasing creating greater urgency to focus on net zero goals and LEED Zero provides a pathway to encourage and acknowledge net zero commitments.
When we take lessening the impact of buildings on the environment to the next level we arrive at LEED Zero. For more than two decades, LEED has provided a framework for high performance buildings and spaces, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions through strategies impacting land, energy, transportation, water, waste and materials. Building on that work, USGBC has developed LEED Zero, a complement to LEED that verifies the achievement of net zero goals in carbon, energy, water and waste.
